


Kintsugi Skin

by Anonymous



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Bread, Carrots, Gen, Gift Fic, Healing, Minecraft, Past Violence, Post-Exile Arc on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Potatoes, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:48:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29957766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Tommy hadn’t brought a map, hadn’t even thought of it. He’d packed supplies of food and armor, enough wood for a boat and tools to get by. He hadn’t brought any books, any way to document the here to the there – because he hadn’t known just where the there would be. He wasn’t meant to know, and neither was anyone else.He’d just picked a direction, and started walking.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24
Collections: Anonymous





	Kintsugi Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Writing request per @chunkysoup12

It’s far.

Tommy hadn’t brought a map, hadn’t even thought of it. He’d packed supplies of food and armor, enough wood for a boat and tools to get by. He hadn’t brought any books, any way to document the here to the there – because he hadn’t known just where the _there_ would be. He wasn’t meant to know, and neither was anyone else.

He’d just picked a direction, and started walking.

Traveling over land is tedious; he’d had to stop at night, build makeshift shelters and wait out the rising of the sun to burn away the undead scrabbling at his dirt walls. So, when he could, he’d searched out bodies of water and just started rowing as far as he could, for as long as he could.

Whenever it felt like just far enough – he kept going farther.

Where he’d finally stopped hadn’t been perfect, but a lack of food slows even the most steadfast of steps. There’d been uneven ground and now much of a view, but the hills surrounding the small patch of land were tall yet devoid of white-tipped peaks.

Not plains. Not snowy.

It fits his needs.

The first few nights had been rough. He’s not a great builder even with ample and varied supplies; out here, he has birch and he has dirt. Still, trial and error of one too many spiders poking their heads through his lack of windows had made for decent motivation to collect sand from the beach for glass. The wailing moans of passing zombies had given him reason to fortify his hut’s walls and go mining for coal and flint. He’s not a child anymore, hasn’t been in nearly a year despite his age. Still, the nights pass a little easier with the warm glow of a torch at the foot of his bed.

Once the sun’s scorched away the undead from the land, Tommy rolls out of bed and does something so unusual for him, saying it aloud sounds foreign to his ears.

He gets to work.

Food is scarce out here. There’d been one or two sightings of cows, but Tommy hadn’t given chase. Too many bad memories itch at the corner of his mind whenever he thinks about them; he really didn’t want to kill them. Keeping one as a pet is even less desirable, and whenever he thinks about that option Tommy has to close his eyes and think of anything else until the sick feeling in his gut goes away.

So, with slaughterhouses off the table, he does the only sustainable thing he can think of.

He farms.

Planting’s not that bad. Tommy find he likes working with his hands – more than he’d thought, anyway. It’s relaxing, to be out under the open skies without a single wall caging him in. It’s pleasant to feel the dirt between his fingers, to pull up weeds and compare their scraggly roots to the discolored rivulets of white running down his arms.

When he’d first stumbled out of the prison, he hadn’t had a chance to look at himself. It’s through the shocked gasps of others that he learns that he’s – fractured.

“Not broken,” Puffy had corrected, speaking over Jack’s stammered remark. “Sort of – cracked?”

Tommy hadn’t known what they’d meant until he’d stumbled to a nearby river and gotten a good look at himself – at the broken lines running from where his head, now healed, had been smashed open on the floor. Everything’s healed, all his skin is perfectly intact, it’s just some parts are – wrong. Some are smoother than the rest, pale and strange like the blood that had poured from his head and down his arms had permanently stained his body with its presence in a visible, unforgettable way.

It’s sort of nice, not to live by a river now. Tommy doesn’t look at himself often, and he likes it that way.

He’d brought some carrots with him for the trip, and seeds are easy to come by among the weeds and grass. Even if no one’s around to hear them, making ‘hoe’ jokes never gets old and cheers him up as he works the blade into the ground over and over. Day by day, his plots grow a little bigger, a little fuller. It’s a diet mostly made of bread and carrots, but it’s good eating – and hey, he’s getting better at fishing. Still shit, but better.

He finds a scattering of potatoes one day, growing wild and free. There’d been enough to harvest, to take back to his plots and replant. To make a little potato farm of his own, should he want to.

His mind had informed him that so casually, as his hands had sliced flint across steel and burned the plants to the ground.

There’s been no wildfires beyond that, luckily. Thunderstorms have been few and infrequent, never striking anywhere near Tommy’s fields or hut. On days like those Tommy just curls up in bed and watches the rain speckle his windows with droplets, listening to the crack of thunder that’s soothing in a way he can’t explain.

He really likes rain now. Rainy days are days where he doesn’t have to water, doesn’t have to do much of anything but enjoy the chilly air and smell of – well, rain.

There’s also the visitor.

Tommy doesn’t see him often – he thinks it’s a him, at least. During the rainfall, especially a really bad storm, a wild cat will slink out from the woods and make itself comfortable on his porch.

The first time it had happened, Tommy’d dismissed it as a fluke. The rain had stopped in a matter of hours and with it, the cat had slinked off without a backwards glance. No goodbye, no rub-up on Tommy’s shins, so he’d shrugged and wandered back inside to cook his dinner.

Yet the cat’s presence on his porch became almost familiar; the sound of rain was like a bell going off in his head, indicating that he’s about to be visited.

The cat doesn’t look for pets, so Tommy doesn’t offer. It spares him occasional glances, and Tommy does the same.

He doesn’t have a lot of fish but sometimes, if he has extra, he’ll leave one out once the pitter-patter of droplets sound on his roof. Tommy never sees the cat eat it, but it’s always disappeared by the time they part ways.

The cat’s nice company. Unobtrusive. It doesn’t ask questions, and Tommy doesn’t have to answer them.

He thought it’d be the only company he’d keep out here.

\---

It’s kind of annoying how with no idea where he is, Tubbo manages to find him anyway.

Tommy isn’t sure how, but Tubbo’s always been a little strange. A little too in tune and out of wack all at once, no matter what the situation.

This situation’s awkward. It’s awkward to see your best friend for the first time in months while you’re on your knees in the mud, working out a particularly tough weed while he stares at you as if on the verge of tears.

He doesn’t cry, though. Tommy watches as Tubbo visibly composes himself and asks if he can come in to – Tommy’s hut? His home? Tubbo seems to presume Tommy has places to sit, more than one chair, as if Tommy had been expecting or even hoping for human company.

Tommy invites him in anyway.

There’s several things Tommy doesn’t want to hear about, several things he doesn’t even like thinking about if he can help it. Words and memories and flashes of people he’d like to forget can all sour his day in an instant, so Tubbo’s presence in his single kitchen chair is like a bomb waiting to go off the moment the other boy opens his mouth.

Tubbo, surprisingly, talks about none of them.

Instead, he tells Tommy it’s nice to see him. He talks about his new kid – what? – and his new husband – **_what?_** – and a little bee farm project he’s been working on. He compliments Tommy’s house and laughs when Tommy informs him that no, it’s shit.

They talk for hours about everything and nothing. Everything to do with Tubbo, with happiness, with everything going right. Nothing about the _why_ or whatever the hell else is going on in the lands Tommy left because he knows there is something, there is always _something_ as long as certain people keep poisoning the soil.

But Tubbo doesn’t mention anything, so Tommy doesn’t have to think about it.

They part an hour before evening. Tommy checks that Tubbo has enough to get him home, gives him a few carrots for the road. Tubbo asks if he can build a nether portal to make travel to and from the lands a little easier, and takes it with remarkable grace when Tommy tells him no.

It doesn’t hurt or relieve Tommy the way he thought it might, watching his best friend retreat down his porch steps. It’d just been company, temporary and pleasant. Like the cat, but a little clingier.

Tommy stands there, waiting until Tubbo’s silhouette has disappeared over the hills and the sun’s begun slipping behind them. When both are finally, firmly out of view he lowers his gaze back down to his hands and inspects them in the dying light.

The marks are still there; even beneath his dirtied, slightly-cracked palms, he can still see the lines leaking down to his fingertips. They don’t go away – they’ll probably never go away, no matter how hard he works, no matter how much peace this new life brings him. He’ll have to live with them.

But he’s doing it. He’s died, and died, and died, but he’s still here. Still breathing. Still living, and waking up each morning _wanting_ to.

Tommy flexes his fingers, curling them into a fist before looking back up towards the sky. He's still here. He's going to keep being here, as long as he can, no matter what it takes.

He's going to live. It doesn't matter how many times he breaks, how many times he's put back together.

Tommy inhales deeply and exhales slowly as the tiniest smile twitches onto his lips.

_Suck it, green boy._


End file.
